Parallax
by XxHot92xX
Summary: But in the end, they are just smudges. Accidental. Because humans need an explanation. Rorschach .
1. Butterfly

**Title:** Parallax  
**Description:** But in the end, they are just smudges. Accidental. Because humans need an explanation.  
**Pairing:** Slight ROR/DAN  
**Rating:** M

**A/N:** Drabble-fest. I have not seen the movie yet, but I have read most of the graphic novel. It's just pure love. Basically, I took some of the most common responses to ink blot tests and wrote little vignettes on them.

"Butterfly" is first. Hope you enjoy.

- - -

_Stomp on baby's breath  
_

**.Butterfly. **

Walter had come to the realization that beauty was subjective at an early age. The ripe, bitter tang of five years in his soul had already begun to wither away. Grass tickled lovingly at his toes while his mother's hand left a scarlet stain upon his cheek – the sun averting its rays as the neighbors were hushed, mother's screams reverberating off graffiti-slain bricks. The forgotten bag of groceries whimpered forlornly while the woman huffed, exasperated from the bout of cruel energy spent, and laid a hand across her forehead.

Walter kneeled in the grass, the lonely patch that had sporadically sprouted two summers ago, and stared at earth's tendrils. He couldn't help but imagine the tips slick with red than a healthy, translucent dew. Early morning skirted away, clouds rolling with wind's hurried whispers. The travesty upon the patch of grass – barely a lawn; a few scant weeds, patches of muddled dirt and woodlice attempting to burrow deep into the shallow soil – glared and sputtered. Ruddy knees pressed hard into the ground and Walter refused to raise a hand to clamp onto his stinging cheek. The cool rush of clear liquid cascading his flesh provided him some nominal comfort.

_ Hush, my child.._

Lipstick smudged, smearing unattractively from her lip to the far side of her jowls, Mrs. Kovacs closed her eyes – in either disgust or succumbing to the ravishing notion _to forget_ – and scowled as she felt her heels sink into the dirt. Clutching her robe tight with gnarled fingers, she snatched the grocery bag. The final clicks of the dusty shoes echoed on the cracked sidewalk, leaving Walter in the throes of his mind, his escape, his grass.

_ Don't you cry.. _

He tried to forget about the condoms shaking in his hands as he was escorted to his mother, the clerk flabbergasted at the mere sight of a child seizing the rubbers close to his chest – as if everything intertwined with the latex. Walter stared at the grass instead, focusing intently on the slick caress of each strand that popped hardily from the earth. Still, he could not erase his mother's face, red and blotched with John Doe's greedy kisses. The humility failed to outweigh the ache in his chest, the weeping of his ribs, as Mrs. Kovacs tugged his arm roughly – the condoms spewing across the tiled floor.

_ "I can't take you anywhere! You ruin everything, **everything**!"_

The monochrome packets gazed up bashfully from the floor while the clerk's mouth opened in late commissary for the child. He tried to avert his eyes from his mother's murky ones, so unlike his pale cerulean – the only feature upon his face to remain unscathed. Instead, Walter bit his lip hard, the peculiar taste of acerbity staining his teeth, and stared neutrally at the condoms lying lopsided and scattered. There were seven. He had counted. Twice. He would've had to count eighteen more times to outlast his mother's verbal slaughter and the clerk's pitying countenance.

The neighbors slowly returned to their thresholds, tongues bitten and swelling as front doors softly click shut. _See no evil._ Walter is silent, emerald stains rubbed against his kneecaps, legs slowly ebbing to a blissful numb. Despite the aloof way his eyes roved over each blade of grass, inside he felt turmoil bubble against the acidic lining of his stomach. Walter swallowed. The bile was creeping, nudging his esophagus as the jagged memory of his whimpering explanation to his mother surfaced, how he closed his eyes to the packets at their feet –

_ "I just wanted to help." _

The throb of the yellow bruises gripping his left arm were starting to fade. The grass – patchy and forgotten – sighed beneath his fingers when Walter uprooted the innocent things. Two clumps of green in his fists. Russet locks burning in the afternoon sun, too big to hide precariously behind a passing cloud, and azure eyes darkening to navy, the child catches sight of an ivory smudge in his peripheral. He had disturbed a grave.

A moth, crumpled and heaving from a heel slicing right through its heart, lay idle. The powder of its wings still shimmered with the whisper of the noon breeze though its lungs were collapsed and shredded. He is afraid to touch it, the curiosity to prod the carcass with a finger halted. Instead, Walter watches as the wind creates the semblance of life, fluttering the frayed wings. _ The desperate attempt to fly. _

Walter is five when he realizes the presence of subjectivity. Tears still whisking past the ugly red slathered on his cheek, lips parted with abated breath, Walter deems the dead creature beautiful.

- - -

**A/N:**

Soundtrack:  
Marvelous Things -- Eisely

_Butterfly_ represents hope, light, dreams. The dead moth translates to the fabrication of such things in Walter Kovacs' world.

**Next:** Fox


	2. Fox

**Title: **Parallax **  
Description: **But in the end, they are just smudges. Accidental. Because humans need an explanation. **  
Pairing: **Slight ROR/DAN **  
Rating**: M **  
A/N: **Drabble-fest. I have not seen the movie yet, but I have read most of the graphic novel. It's just pure love. Basically, I took some of the most common responses to ink blot tests and wrote little vignettes on them. Hope you enjoy.

This chapter is Fox.

**.Fox. **

Walter has no words as her hand clasps his own – soft flesh creating friction with the rough contours of his palm. It's his only encounter, a momentary lapse in judgement that landed him here in the dark alley – whiskey slurs foaming on her lips as she smiles devilishly. It was in the middle of running away, but not really running at all. More like walking out the door and no one trying to stop him. He's sixteen and maybe she can't make out the blemishes, the horrid expanse that lays against his face in the poor, eerie lighting of street lamps flickering and walls pushing their bodies together.

He isn't sure where he was when her eyes met his and she raced towards him. Almost a sprint, as if his presence was the paramount cause of such urgency_ to be near him_. It doesn't appear that she cares at all, inhaling deeply, raggedly, even though he hasn't showered for two days time. The odors of the street, of wet pavement and of vendors stick to his sides like molasses, but she licks off the scents just fine – plush lips kissing everywhere but his own mouth that is stubbornly sealed shut.

Walter doesn't look at her at all, letting his body slowly become limp as she searches further for a heart, anything resembling a beat – a rhythm they could both sway to and conveniently forget to. He knows she will come up empty, but try she does; her hands grab either side of his coat collar, tugging him closer, _closer_ because it's still so damn cold on 53rd street. Walter continues to glare at the wall opposite of this filth perspiring in the alley – pretends he isn't part of it at all. Maybe it's her muddy brown locks that stick to her face as she tries to shed his shirt to reveal the scarred body beneath, yet he can't help but be reminded blatantly of black lace and a million fathers-to-be. It's his mother that rubs her leg against his thigh, no matter how hard he tries to remember it's just a misplaced girl. Just him. Just an alleyway that people politely pass by, leaving them to violate the precious pages of the bible and slander the holy name of matrimony...

He only moves, awakens from predestined slumber, when her hands try to creep towards the zipper of his jeans, suddenly furious, a delicious red overtaking him – grabs her hand and feels her bones ache in protest. Walter's only marginally frightened as he discovers he enjoys _this_ so much better – the stopping of violation, the dance of bones and ligaments beneath his fingers, the sharp wheezes that escape her lips that are still pressed to his neck.

"What are you – "

He stops her right there since he doesn't really know, can't answer, and squeezes harder until there's an audible snap. She tries to pull away, a flurry of movement as the instinct to flee clouds both their eyes. Her hair is tangling against the buttons of his jacket and now neither of them can part. He doesn't let go of the broken hand. Walter later laments that perhaps he was too busy trying to extricate himself from her tentacles of ruddy hair, but he later confesses that he had to_ make her see the wrong, the putrid act that had almost been conceived -- how God would quiver in this malevolent glory._

He lets go and she runs. Walter doesn't watch where the frightened girl escapes to, only leans against the brick – attempting to keep a blank stare even though the snarl and tears of self-disgust threaten to overwhelm him. Rather, he sluggishly slides down the wall to sit among the trash and crumpled wrappers. Alone, with the remnants of a hooker's kiss upon his neck.

This is better.

- - -  
**A/N:** Fox is treacherous, sneaky, conniving. This is how Walter feels as he is about to perform an immoral act.  
Instrumentals/Inspiration -- Slow Dance by Framing Hanley  
Reviewing is the Muse's muse =)  



	3. Dancing

**Title:** Parallax**  
Description:** But in the end, they are just smudges. Accidental. Because humans need an explanation.**  
Pairing:** Slight ROR/DAN**  
Rating:** M  
**A/N:** Drabble-fest. I have not seen the movie yet, but I have read most of the graphic novel. It's just pure love.

This chapter is Dancing.

**.Dancing.**

Daniel finds him on his stoop, the cement dampened from the night's bout of rain. The Nite Owl can still feel the drudgery of wet splotches echo with each step he takes, because he can't stop himself from approaching the other man, the magnetic pull strong and vicious; he always considered himself more moth than owl anyways. Silent. Brooding. It's like any other day before, blood-stained gloves and a mask more black than ivory forever staring into his soul. A car crawls by, the dark guise of the moon's kingdom drowning out their silhouettes for now – but daylight is breaking fast and if the sun reaches Rorschach before Dan does, it will be far too late.

The thirty-three year-old grips his briefcase tighter, silently berating the gimmick; the cape and mask hastily stuffed inside the monochrome leather. His tie is a bit too pinching, esophagus barely getting breaths past his teeth as he stops in front of his sometimes-partner. The fedora is hiding his face from view – the only face Daniel has come to know (and hopes he always will because what lays beneath is the broken shell and the window dressing is too lovely to shatter) – and the bespectacled man squints. Through the noir abyss between the men, he can spot the light sprinkling of crimson lining the edge of the hat, an odious ribbon that pulls its wearer tighter and tighter until he can no longer utter _stop, stop, please.  
_  
Rationality lay dead at their feet, the rotting corpse leaving the lingering tang of bile in the back of Dan's throat. Chest slathering with the ice of New York's winter, he decided to clear the cobwebs from his lips, "Are you okay?"

A tad out of place, a cumbersome and too-soft statement for the slashes of red dabbling the fringes of Rorschach's coat (the mahogany hue spotted in purple), but the masked man pays no heed. He only offers a slight shudder of his shoulders, shoes gripping the pavement tight against the worn soles. Dan can see his fists clenched tautly, a slow breath away from shattering, rattling, breaking apart. Street lamp flickering, the disguised vigilante exhales a quivering breath.

"Let's go inside, alright? It's a bit chilly out here, damp..."

Words aren't appropriate, but Dan has always relied on the fallible nouns and adjectives, lapping up each participial as if they were the only ones who truly understood. He watched helplessly as verbs scurried away from Rorschach's callused fingers, and grimaced when the stolid man refused Dan's own tattered clauses and conjunctions. _All he could offer. _

The next moments are an unintelligible smear across Dan's psyche, suddenly shouldering a Rorschach stricken with paralysis towards his kitchen table – the designated spot for misplaced rage, despair and hope. He remembers to pull out a chair in time for the other man to fall into, limbs numb as Dan's fingers left the toned arms of his comrade. The other man slowly slumps further into his newfound seat and the Nite Owl doesn't mind the faint stains of blood slurring across his kitchen table – _how they always ended up at this same place_ – from Rorschach's attempt to pull himself up and sit straight. But that irking pole that had always been rigid against his spine has broken, shattered into eons of pieces, and Dan tries to blot out the image of him stepping on those shards as he walks over to the sink.

Silence is a haze thick with tension, but Dan knows the stiffness only lies in his bones – Rorschach, for once, at ease or perhaps traumatic shock. The bespectacled man has a hard time figuring out which of them comes out the victor as he fills up a glass of water, a guise for a panacea (because nothing can cure any of their ailments, now could they?). Just like his words, he splashes the cool liquid upon the table, sets it down softly but not gentle enough to hush the absurdly loud clink of glass against wood that splinters the pretense breathing down their necks.

The words are coming again, drivel sentences that attempt to cover the macabre and grime of the city gutters; to shadow Laurie's incessant bruises beneath her honey eyes, to block out Jon's perpetual dead gaze, to cease the obvious wrinkles usurping Adrian's "timeless" face –

To mask _what this is_ surrounding his kitchen table.

He cannot stop himself, "You need to drink, you need – "

Rorschach's head slowly turned to regard him, ink splatters shifting to create beauteous, amorphous figures of loves past and those petulant secrets. Dan could see the gloved hands tighten for just one breath before the younger man turns away once more. He can imagine slated eyes closing, mouth tight as it always would be; pursed and unwilling to conform towards carefree grins. Dan tried to pull back the hand that dared to travel towards the stoic vigilante's shoulder, blood spattered and reeking of those crimson-colored regrets, but the appendage ignored his mental cries to halt, to cease.

They both held their breath as the fingers found the dampened cloth, both stiffening to the fact that a physical barrier had just been ripped asunder and Dan could scarcely hear the whisper between them –

_ "You need me."_

Fingers tightened.

* * *

**A/N:**_ Dancing_ is the rhythmic movement of two people – backwards and forwards. This is Dan and Walter's relationship (close enough to grasp, but almost never touch).  
Instrumentals/Inspiration -- Gone Forever - Three Days Grace

Reviewing is the Muse's muse.

_- - H. 92_


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